


oceans never listen to us anyway

by buriedbooks (Jagged)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Grimdark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 19:29:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jagged/pseuds/buriedbooks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lalondes are bad at giving up, and Rose is her mother's daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oceans never listen to us anyway

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [villainesses comment ficathon](http://yon-lougawou.livejournal.com/17550.html) on LJ.

If you could think now you would thinking: _if my mother taught me anything it is not to look back._

You had a dream like this once, where you were burned, burning, a broken pyre on a bed of nothing, and in the morning you woke, your pillow damp and your mouth hurting around an unfamiliar smile.

You were not yet thirteen, but you thought perhaps you knew, already, how you were going to die.

-

There are many things you are not afraid of. Silence. Heights. Shadows. Dying.

In the bright rain you had an image: of you, held aloft, burning. The water was cold. You were following your mother and the rain was fingers on your skin, whispers in your ears, like a cat’s paw light and gentle over the back of your neck, the fall of your hair.

There were days, before, when your mother would look at you through the veil of her perfect hair and the swirl of her drink, and there was something about her then that pulled at you, made wordless things rise inside your chest, your heart, your throat. You used to think, _the trust must be inside her, somewhere_. There was a phantom ache in your fingers, a leftover of touch or perhaps, rather, the need to tear her walls apart.

You had an image of you, bleeding black, on fire, and your heart beat steady in your chest, and you kept going.

-

You are here now, and the darkness is closing in. That’s alright. The sky black, your heart on fire, purpose bright inside of you—there are voices inside your head, crawling and dark and coming from somewhere so far away, and you are not afraid.

You’re just angry, and tired.

Your mother is dead and you will lose, inevitably. That’s what they’re telling you and if you were just anyone perhaps you would listen, but you’re not. Your name is Rose Lalonde. You are your mother’s child. You shook off the rain and it was bright, you went for answers and got them, and now, and now—

-

This is what you know: everything breaks. People die.

-

If you cut yourself now, would you bleed black? When the fire came it shone dark, and you let it sink inside of you because it was the way forward; watched the stain of it under your skin and found the words you had cultivated for years in the garden of your mind grown twisted.

Inside your head something—someone?—said _Choose_ and power crackled at your fingers, steeped in shadows, carried you up into the darkness.

Sometimes you must make sacrifices. Someone taught you this, someone with an affinity for programs and cold, cold things and none left for the living, but who must nevertheless have tried.

The least you can do is go forward.

-

These are the things you know: everything dies, and that means Jack, too, and if you are to lose then you are going down fighting, burning, breaking the universe apart until you find that one timeline where he stays down and make it stick.

You dreamt once of rain, and skies darkening, and saw death and spat in its eye.

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and the rest of the world can damn well stand in line.


End file.
